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TV and other stuff...
Mar. 18th, 2010 09:26 pmRather nasty mood this week due to a combination of factors that I won't bore you with.
Did jump on lj quickly at lunch, checked out No Rest For the Wicked Awards out of curiousity. Two things :
1. That site is Definitely NOT Work Safe. I freaked. And scampered out after five minutes. Then worried for about twenty minutes. So, do not, I repeat do not, visit that site while at work.
2. I apparently got second place in it. Which is actually a bit of an accomplishment, considering how many metas were nominated - close to 30 at last count. And the quality of metas - I was going up against people like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aycheb and beer_good_foamy. Can't frigging find the essay that won. Anywhere. Not even on the site of the person who wrote it. And I can't figure out what it was on. Very weird. Was curious. Because, I thought aycheb would win. Or stormwreath or beer_good.
Oh and congrats to the others on flist who won or got runner up, you know who you are. ;-)
On TV Front:
1. Justified - was surprisingly good. It's basically Elmore Leonard meets Gunsmoke in modern day. Has the raunchy, anti-hero characters that populate Leonard's modern day, noir mysteries. Except Leonard's noir is more neo, in that the characters are redeemable and the women are cliche. I've read a lot of Elmore Leonard in my lifetime. Also Carl Hiasson and whoever wrote all those Travis McGee novels. When I state I've read a lot of genre fiction, I'm not exaggerating. I got a bit burned out sometime around the 1990s...and jumped to sci-fantasy for a bit. You know you've read too many when they start blurring together and can't remember one from the other, and can predict exactly what will happen next. In case you haven't figured it out by now - I'm a compulsive binger when it comes to cultural things. I overdose until I get completely sick of it, and can't read it again, and jump to the next one. Also, I never know when I'll get sick of it. At any rate - the show is interesting. It's about this sort of hard nosed US Marshall who is sent back to his hometown in Kentucky because he killed a fugitive in a restaurant at point blank range while the guy was eating lunch. The guy did draw first, but still. So off to Kentucky he goes, reunites with old buddies, joins the local police force, and hooks up with a girl who had a crush on him and meets up with his ex - who left him.
All sorts of hijinks ensue. Like all of F/X's tv shows it's basically a character driven episodic serial a la The Shield, Damages, Sons of Anarchy. Well written. The dialogue snaps. And the humor is black as pitch, with a good old boy snark to it.
2. Lost - ehh...I was unimpressed and I happen to be a Sawyer fan. Was actually looking forward to his episode. But, alas, Lost was better last year. Or at least I thought so. This year just feels a bit tired and a tad on the cliche side. I may be wrong, but I'm willing to bet people are going to be massively disappointed in the ending. Maybe I've watched too many shows like this? It's possible. ;-)
3. Caprica - mixed feelings about last week's episode. It was okay. A bit slow in places. Still, overall, I have to say I'm enjoying Caprica more than most shows.
4. The Good Wife continues to hit them out of the park. Stellar series. Well written, well acted, and well plotted. And it has Alan Cummings, one of my all time favorite character actors. (Yeah, some people follow leading men, me? I know the character actors. There's a reason for that - character actors tend to be theater trained and actually know how to act on screen and don't just wander about looking pretty, flexing their abs, and their eyebrows. Nothing is more boring than tall dark and handsome who flexes his eyebrows every time he thinks he needs to emote.) To give it credit - The Good Wife actually has a lot of character actors or people who are theater trained with oodles of experience.
Have the Wire - first season sitting at home now. No clue when I'll get around to it. And considering I can't get into Damages at the moment, it may not be the best time. Brain has been sucked dry by the work demon.
On a final note? Big Bang Theory has the distinction of being the only situation comedy to make me consistently roar with laughter five weeks straight. This is rare. Usually it's - one episode, roar with laughter, next episode - cringe, next episode - bored, next episode -roar, next episode cringe...okay why do people like this? I give up!! That said, if you are looking for a situation comedy that meets the Bechdel test for female characters? The Big Bang is not it. Still a male centric, male perspective, comedy. It's hilarious. There's a woman in it - but she basically plays the straight man and is not seen outside of the three guys or guy. I wouldn't bring this up, except outside of maybe The Middle - there are no female situation comedies that meet the Bechdel test. I think the last one may well have been Sex in The City, and just barely.
What is the Bechendel Test you ask? Here:
The strip popularized what is now known as the Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel/Wallace test, the Bechdel rule, or Bechdel's law. Bechdel credits her friend Liz Wallace for the test, which appears in a 1985 strip entitled "The Rule", in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:
1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.
A variant of the test, in which the two women must additionally be named characters, is also called the Mo Movie Measure. The name is a misnomer as neither Mo nor the other regular characters had been introduced yet at the time of this strip's publication.
And go here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dykes_to_Watch_Out_For#The_Bechdel_test
There's actually more dramas that pass this test than sitch comedies. I'd provide a list, but really, do you care?? ;-)
Did jump on lj quickly at lunch, checked out No Rest For the Wicked Awards out of curiousity. Two things :
1. That site is Definitely NOT Work Safe. I freaked. And scampered out after five minutes. Then worried for about twenty minutes. So, do not, I repeat do not, visit that site while at work.
2. I apparently got second place in it. Which is actually a bit of an accomplishment, considering how many metas were nominated - close to 30 at last count. And the quality of metas - I was going up against people like
aycheb and beer_good_foamy. Can't frigging find the essay that won. Anywhere. Not even on the site of the person who wrote it. And I can't figure out what it was on. Very weird. Was curious. Because, I thought aycheb would win. Or stormwreath or beer_good.Oh and congrats to the others on flist who won or got runner up, you know who you are. ;-)
On TV Front:
1. Justified - was surprisingly good. It's basically Elmore Leonard meets Gunsmoke in modern day. Has the raunchy, anti-hero characters that populate Leonard's modern day, noir mysteries. Except Leonard's noir is more neo, in that the characters are redeemable and the women are cliche. I've read a lot of Elmore Leonard in my lifetime. Also Carl Hiasson and whoever wrote all those Travis McGee novels. When I state I've read a lot of genre fiction, I'm not exaggerating. I got a bit burned out sometime around the 1990s...and jumped to sci-fantasy for a bit. You know you've read too many when they start blurring together and can't remember one from the other, and can predict exactly what will happen next. In case you haven't figured it out by now - I'm a compulsive binger when it comes to cultural things. I overdose until I get completely sick of it, and can't read it again, and jump to the next one. Also, I never know when I'll get sick of it. At any rate - the show is interesting. It's about this sort of hard nosed US Marshall who is sent back to his hometown in Kentucky because he killed a fugitive in a restaurant at point blank range while the guy was eating lunch. The guy did draw first, but still. So off to Kentucky he goes, reunites with old buddies, joins the local police force, and hooks up with a girl who had a crush on him and meets up with his ex - who left him.
All sorts of hijinks ensue. Like all of F/X's tv shows it's basically a character driven episodic serial a la The Shield, Damages, Sons of Anarchy. Well written. The dialogue snaps. And the humor is black as pitch, with a good old boy snark to it.
2. Lost - ehh...I was unimpressed and I happen to be a Sawyer fan. Was actually looking forward to his episode. But, alas, Lost was better last year. Or at least I thought so. This year just feels a bit tired and a tad on the cliche side. I may be wrong, but I'm willing to bet people are going to be massively disappointed in the ending. Maybe I've watched too many shows like this? It's possible. ;-)
3. Caprica - mixed feelings about last week's episode. It was okay. A bit slow in places. Still, overall, I have to say I'm enjoying Caprica more than most shows.
4. The Good Wife continues to hit them out of the park. Stellar series. Well written, well acted, and well plotted. And it has Alan Cummings, one of my all time favorite character actors. (Yeah, some people follow leading men, me? I know the character actors. There's a reason for that - character actors tend to be theater trained and actually know how to act on screen and don't just wander about looking pretty, flexing their abs, and their eyebrows. Nothing is more boring than tall dark and handsome who flexes his eyebrows every time he thinks he needs to emote.) To give it credit - The Good Wife actually has a lot of character actors or people who are theater trained with oodles of experience.
Have the Wire - first season sitting at home now. No clue when I'll get around to it. And considering I can't get into Damages at the moment, it may not be the best time. Brain has been sucked dry by the work demon.
On a final note? Big Bang Theory has the distinction of being the only situation comedy to make me consistently roar with laughter five weeks straight. This is rare. Usually it's - one episode, roar with laughter, next episode - cringe, next episode - bored, next episode -roar, next episode cringe...okay why do people like this? I give up!! That said, if you are looking for a situation comedy that meets the Bechdel test for female characters? The Big Bang is not it. Still a male centric, male perspective, comedy. It's hilarious. There's a woman in it - but she basically plays the straight man and is not seen outside of the three guys or guy. I wouldn't bring this up, except outside of maybe The Middle - there are no female situation comedies that meet the Bechdel test. I think the last one may well have been Sex in The City, and just barely.
What is the Bechendel Test you ask? Here:
The strip popularized what is now known as the Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel/Wallace test, the Bechdel rule, or Bechdel's law. Bechdel credits her friend Liz Wallace for the test, which appears in a 1985 strip entitled "The Rule", in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:
1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.
A variant of the test, in which the two women must additionally be named characters, is also called the Mo Movie Measure. The name is a misnomer as neither Mo nor the other regular characters had been introduced yet at the time of this strip's publication.
And go here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dykes_to_Watch_Out_For#The_Bechdel_test
There's actually more dramas that pass this test than sitch comedies. I'd provide a list, but really, do you care?? ;-)
